Steve Mills and his wife have one daughter. They previously owned two coffee/ice cream shops, currently operate an internet sales company and teach classes, but his primary job involves the paper industry worldwide. Hobbies and interests lie in gardening, photography, recorded music and of course, their pets.

As discussed and shown at the last garden club meeting.

There is a farm publication that my brother Joe always gets for me as a Christmas gift. It is a highly anticipated subscription and I truly enjoy every issue from front to back.

We passed around a sign-up sheet to get a free issue at our last meeting but I noticed on the website that you can do this yourself as well. http://farmshow.com/ (This link is NOT an affiliate link)

I don't usually go to the website. No real reason, just seem to enjoy reading their information on paper but in their recent publication they mentioned an ingenious invention for using a drill to pull-start most gas engines. They said (and I now concur) that the best way to understand it is to view the video.

As I get younger, pulling these chords gets older and older, so it caught my attention. I've gotten rid of a few devices because pulling got to be too much, especially in the winter.

It is not being produced yet, so this is not an advertisement, just letting you know it is coming some day. Scroll down the page on that link I gave you to the second video. Of course, they are all interesting so.....

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On some other growing points, now is a great time to re-pot the plants you brought in to overwinter and for you houseplants too.

Be sure to make sure you allow for good drainage and possibly add some rocks or broken pot shards in the bottom.

If the plants are going to still be exposed to cold weather, consider lining the outside of the pot with bubble wrap to insulate the soil so the roots have less chance of freezing.

-- Posted by stevemills on Tue, Dec 3, 2013, at 5:24 PM

The cool weather must have triggered our Dracaena fragrans (corn plant) into flowering. Even though it had done this about 7 years ago, we forgot, so we were once again surprised.

The flowers open and become strongly fragrant in the evening. We kept looking around, trying to figure out what and from where the smell was coming.

We closed up some air fresheners, stopped burning candles and the smell seemed to go away but what we did not realize was that the flowers closed up in the day. so the smell disappeared.

It was Debbi's 95 year old mother who remembered the plant flowering all those years ago. Once she mentioned it we looked up and voila. (the plant is about 9 feet tall.

-- Posted by stevemills on Tue, Dec 3, 2013, at 8:44 PM

That mosquito plant I received at the last meeting is majorly thriving on the back of my sink, hopefully there will be offspring from it, being on the back of the sink, the dawn dish soap might have a new use....can't be my thumbs they are not very green....you should snap a photo of that corn plant bloom...I'd really like to see it.

-- Posted by chefgrape on Tue, Dec 3, 2013, at 10:24 PM

I did and I will.

Well, maybe I should say more. I did snap some pictures and I will post them.

I am about to take some other photos of some things found in the garden this morning. Yeh, I was in there at the crack of dawn so I would not take away from my work day. Daylight is too short this time of year.